


Two Paracetamol and a Cup Of Tea

by wreathed



Category: British Comedy RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Fade to Black, First Time, Hangover, M/M, Morning After, One Night Stands, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-05
Updated: 2010-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: Charlie Brooker is one of Mitchell's drunken one-night stands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Paracetamol and a Cup Of Tea

An evening’s filming of another panel show had turned into post-filming drinks at a nearby pub. One by one the others had left for their respective homes, until there’s only David and Charlie left, sitting with two joyously old-fashioned pint glasses and getting drunker and drunker. (Charlie’s sure Victoria Coren, the latest to leave, had given him some sort of significant look as she left, but that might have just been the way the room was shifting around abnormally at the edges of his vision at the time.)

“The pub’s about to close,” Charlie tells David when he’s finished his beer. They’re sitting dangerously close together by now, and Charlie is a hopeless onlooker to David’s fingers wrapped around the glass’s handle, the part of his hair that’s most ruffled, the way he swallows when he too finishes the last of his drink.

“Let’s go, then,” David says, a little slurred. “Do you want to get a taxi with me to mine? We could, er, we could carry on drinking there. ”

“OK,” Charlie finds himself saying.

*

In the back of the cab, David gets in a little clumsily and his arm ends up thrown across the empty middle seat so that his hand rests loosely over Charlie’s crotch. He doesn’t move it.

 _It’s not...he’s...he doesn’t...don’t get hard, think of something else for fuck’s sake,_ Charlie tells himself, fighting arousal. The drive passes by in a conversation-free lust-drunk drunken haze, Charlie looking out at night-time London but still able to see the car’s interior reflected in the window. And David is looking at him.

As soon as they’re through the door to David’s hallway, David sort of _lunges_ forward and presses Charlie up against the wall. And then David kisses him, a little sloppily, and Charlie feels a flush of heat rush through him as he kisses softly back.

Eventually, they break apart, and Charlie is breathing heavily and his head is spinning but he has to ask. “David, is this going to be-”

“No, no talking,” David says quietly, sadly, insistently into the line of Charlie’s neck. “‘m not very good at that.”

*

The next morning, Charlie wakes up with a headache and to the sight of David almost dressed, looking frantically through his drawers for a sock to match the one he has on already. Sunlight’s streaming in through a gap in the curtains; Charlie covers his eyes and groans.

“Oh, you’re awake,” David says shortly.

“Morning.”

“You’ll have to get up,” David says, putting on the sock he’s just found. “The door’s been broken for ages. It’s not very easy to open it from this side.”

Charlie watches with interest as David carefully but quickly prises open the door with his fingernails, then (entirely naked and feeling more than a little awkward, but he’s not absolutely sure where his clothes are and had just been waved out rather abruptly) follows David into the kitchen.

He can remember what happened last night. They were both quite drunk, and they came back here, and then they did something rather desperate and sweaty and brilliant. Twice.

But now David isn’t looking at him, just taking two paracetamol and a drink of water.

 _Typical awkward David,_ Charlie wants to think, but it’s more than that: he’s distant. Maybe the alcohol hadn’t just facilitated what they both wanted to happen but had been too shy to instigate. Maybe they weren’t on the same page after all.

“Last night,” David begins, still not looking at Charlie. (He really should have tried to get dressed first.) “Last night, I was quite drunk. You were quite drunk! And I’m glad we get on, but, oh I hate saying this stuff-”

“Say it,” Charlie tells him firmly, serious and sad and embarrassed.

“Not that I want to assume that you _did_ want anything more out of this, but seeing as you didn’t run away as soon as we’d finished-”

“-your hopeless door apparently wouldn’t have let me get away, anyway-” and despite it all, David snorts.

“-and you said, well, you know what you said...I don’t want to do this again. I don’t want a relationship. With you, or with anyone – I can’t, right now. Sorry. Sorry, I’ve done this before, but not for a while – got drunk, and then...regrets.”

 _Regrets._ Charlie doesn’t retort as his heart sinks: he doesn’t want to shout, doesn’t want to ruin things even further. Because David is behaving like a clueless, guilty bastard and Charlie still can’t hate him. Far from it.

And it’s Charlie’s fault, really. He shouldn’t have got so drunk either. He should have remembered that things like this for him always end abruptly and never end well.

“Would you like some tea?”

“Yes please,” Charlie grinds out, head, pounding, and feels proud of himself for putting on his clothes (found shoved behind the sofa) and for a whole hour pretending that everything’s fine.


End file.
